Religion in a Changing World: Comparative Studies in Sociology

attempts to control them have led to extraordinary coercion and to extraordinary
manipulations of religious institutions.

CONCLUSIONS

In China attempts by the state over several thousand years to control religion
and bend it to state interests have led to complicated entanglements between
religion and regime, each leaving its stamp on the other. Chinese gods appointed
and patronized by state officials naturally reflected the imagery and politics of the
imperial system and enhanced its legitimacy. However, not all gods were
successfully co-opted, especially in regions such as Tibet, which developed a
strong native religion in pre-imperial times.

Twentieth-century revolutionary regimes have dealt harshly with religions,
seeing them as rivals with incompatible agendas. Religious organizations are no
match for a hostile state in the short run, but repression is hard to sustain while the
country is undergoing rapid development. Meanwhile, the loss of faith in
Communism, dismay at widespread corruption, and pressing personal needs
provide fertile ground for old and new religions. Ironically, because China has long
repressed religious organizations, well-developed external religions such as
Christianity face less competition in China from weakened native religions when
state repression declines.

Chinese Buddhism and Christianity have begun to compete again at the
grassroots level, offering salvation, ethical doctrines, and divine help for people
with problems. But Christian house-churches and rural congregations provide a
much stronger sense of community ( Hunter and
Chan 1993), while Christian
miracles and millenarianism attract adherents in impoverished areas.

The state in the late 1990s has been preoccupied with economic development
because officials know that the regime's security and legitimacy depend mainly on
the material well-being of the population. Unlike previous regimes, the Party
declines to claim support from the gods. As the regime's utopian visions fade,
however, religious organizations offer what the state cannot provide ( Stark and Bainbridge 1987) and grow cautiously stronger. The regime may not soon give up
its regulation of the religious marketplace, but its right to do so will be increasingly
challenged.

Brown Deborah. 1996. "The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy in the People's
Republic of China and Hong Kong." Pp.79-141 in
Beatrice Leung (ed.), Church and
State Relations in 21st Century Asia. Hong Kong: Center of Asian Studies, University
of Hong Kong.

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